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Comment by FreedomToCreate | Hacker News Reader

In such a globalized world, where economics are so linked that many countries, including the US, couldn't survive without the others, this type of stuff just sends society backwards. Not like we don't have enough guns pointed at the world, why not spend an exorbitant amount of money to point an even bigger one. You may be able to get someone to listen to you by pointing a gun at them, but never their respect.

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I think you would find very disturbing that 1900's people used just the same argument to "prove" that world war I wasn't possible and would never happen.

I don't think WWI is a case of "if only we had armed ourselves more and more, we could have stopped it sooner."

Here's the story from the LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-missile-defense-signing-...

"One struck the word “limited” from language describing the mission of the country’s homeland missile defense system. The system is designed to thwart a small-scale attack by a non-superpower such as North Korea or Iran."

The real fear is that a small country will acquire missiles with nukes. It's really only a matter of time, a decade perhaps. The upside of technology advancing is that a private company will get to Mars. The downside is that a lot more countries will have the technology for military use.

The US military superiority over the rest of the world is exactly what allows the kind of globalized world you are talking about.

The same exact argument was made not too long before WW1 broke out.

The pointed guns are exactly what keeps the society global.

Historically untrue, globalisation halted during the interwar years, and that was very mutch a period of pointed guns. Of course, you typically point guns when you don't trust the ones you point at so it's no surprise there wasn't a lot of trade

I assume op meant specifically nukes when they said guns

Clearly pointed guns is what prevents wars. Please read more on WWI and WWII history: it was the murkiness and confusion about who has the biggest guns that lead to bloody conflict.

Wars don't happen when there's an obvioua military superiority at one of the sides. US's unipolar world has lead to unique peace in the world.

No, usually obvious millitary superiority leads to some general going "let's have a war, we'll win easily!" Or are you suggesting Saddam invaded Kuwait because he was unshure if they would invade first?

> Not like we don't have enough guns pointed at the world

We've gotten rid of most of the nuke stockpile, at least.

> why not spend an exorbitant amount of money to point an even bigger one

Huh? This is an intercept system, not a weapon.

> Huh? This is an intercept system, not a weapon.

The gun here is America's nukes. America currently can't really even think about using its nukes because of MAD. With a functioning nuclear defence system, America doesn't have to worry about MAD and can use its nukes without worrying about retribution, which makes them a bigger threat, hence a bigger weapon.

I think your point is valid, but I'd like to point out that the phrase "Mutually Assured Destruction" was never "Mutually Assured Annihilation". If Russia manages to land 1% of their nukes in the US, that can still count as the destruction of the US as a superpower, although most US people would survive. Rendering the MAD doctrine obsolete means providing at least 99.9% accuracy in the interception of the ballistic nukes. That still leaves the non-ballistic nukes as a threat, and maybe that's why the Russians are rumored to have created the Status-6 nuclear torpedo/drone of 100 MT TNT equivalent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_torpedo#Status-6

Why not use a bigger one? Because a tungsten rod that is "for defense" also has the force of a small nuclear bomb when it hits the ground. This was one of the proposed weapons for the previous Star Wars initiative.

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